How did John Carpenter come up with Halloween?

Halloween is a 1978 American independent slasher film directed, scored, and co-written by John Carpenter and producer Debra Hill.

After seeing Carpenter’s film Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) at the Milan Film Festival, independent film producer Irwin Yablans and financier Moustapha Akkad approached Carpenter about directing a film about a psychotic killer who stalked babysitters for them.

Carpenter agreed to direct the film in exchange for complete creative control and was compensated $10,000 for his efforts, which included writing, directing, and scoring the film.

Carpenter enlisted the help of his then-girlfriend Debra Hill to co-write and produce the script. They called it The Babysitter Murders.

However, Yablans later suggested renaming the film Halloween and setting it on Halloween.

They devised the story of Michael Myers, a six-year-old boy who murders his adolescent sister on Halloween night in 1963 and is committed to a mental institution.

Myers escapes on the same holiday 15 years later to return to his hometown where he stalks a female babysitter and her friends while being pursued by his psychiatrist.